


A Slow Deep Panic

by Wreck



Series: Jason/Percy Tumblr Fics [2]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 01:04:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2753819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wreck/pseuds/Wreck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“They’re not dead. If they were, I could feel it.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Slow Deep Panic

**Author's Note:**

> I got this prompt on tumblr: "Can you do a Jasercy fic where Jason is trying to comprehend the fact that Percy's gone, preferably death, but it doesn't have to be."
> 
> I had a blast writing this, even if it's on the darker side. 
> 
> Title from the AFI song of the same name.

“They’re not dead. If they were, I could feel it.”

Nico’s words echo through his head as he lays unsleeping in his bunk on the Argo II. He feels a bone deep exhaustion and sadness, but every time he closes his eyes he sees them –  _him_ – falling.

“I should’ve been paying attention,” he whispers, repeating his own words back to himself in the dark. “I could have flown down and saved them.” He doesn’t say them with the anger that he did in front of the rest of his friends. This time the words feel heavy and bitter in his mouth. He can taste his own regret.

This isn’t the first time that Jason has lost someone close to him, he is a Demigod after all, and this isn’t his first quest. But it is the first time he’s lost someone like Percy: someone just as powerful as himself, someone who challenges him both as a man and a hero. Someone he was just beginning to understand.

In the dark of his bunk, panic grips his throat as Jason thinks of the rest of the quest, or gods, the rest of his life without Percy in it. Alone in the dark he’s faced with the sudden and staggering realization that he may never see the other man again.

How could Percy be gone like that, taken out of Jason’s life just as fast as he had entered. Taken away before anything that might have happened…

There are moments, or more accurately, fragments that Jason vividly remembers, and yet they already seem to be fading like a dream: an accidental touch, a pause in an argument, a lingering glance of blue locked on to green; fights that always seemed like more of a dialogue, movements that were already in sync.

There are vignettes, too, flashes into a future that Jason will no longer experience. He’ll never pull Percy’s body flush against his own. He’ll never find out what Percy’s hair feels like between his fingers. He’ll never wrestle Percy down and hold him there with his weight, playing at first but then slowly shifting into something else.

He’ll always wonder if what he thought was there, what he thought might be simmering underneath the surface, was real.

Because even if Percy somehow survived the fall, like Nico said, and if he miraculously makes it through Tartarus and to the Doors of Death, Jason knows deep down that he’s already gone. If Percy reappears he will be a different man, a changed man. And Jason won’t know him anymore.

Jason balls his hands into fists and punches the side of his bunk with all the force he can muster. He cradles his raw knuckles against his chest and lets out a rattling breath.

He won’t cry; he’s the son of Jupiter. He won’t, he won’t, he won’t. Instead Jason curls onto his side, pulling the blankets over his shoulders.

Outside, the Argo II shakes as lightning strikes the mast over and over.

**Author's Note:**

> come hang out with me on tumblr: endlessmeg.tumblr.com


End file.
